On 11 August
2001, John Joseph Kelly, Edward Joseph Campbell and David
Bracken were detained in Bogotá's El Dorado airport while attempting to leave Colombia
(Appeals Court sentence, p. 2).
[4] On the basis of
intelligence from former guerrillas, the three men were
suspected of being IRA explosives experts hired by FARC to
provide military training to their fighters. The three
admitted that their real names were Martin John McCauley,
James William Monaghan and Niall Connolly, respectively, and
that they had arrived from San Vicente del Caguán, an area
under rebel control that had previously been liberated and
demilitarised for the peace negotiations. The military police
officer Captain Wber Pulido arrested the trio and handed them
over to the Colombian courts (18).

After the
preliminary investigation, the public prosecutor charged them
of conducting training for illegal activities and travelling
on false passports, charges that were denied by the defendants
in their pre-trial depositions of 14 and 15 August 2001. The
three men added that they were visiting the liberated area as
tourists and later as observers of the peace process. The
Interpol local branch identified McCauley and Monaghan as IRA
members and explosives experts, and confirmed that the three
men were travelling on passports obtained through fraudulent
methods. Tests on explosive substances were performed by the
US Embassy expert Anthony M. Hall on the possessions of the
three men using General Electric Itemiser technology. The
samples tested positive for traces of nitro, tetril, HMX (high
melting explosive), TNT, and ammonium nitrate, among other
substances (98). On 21 August 2001 the judge remanded the men
in custody and on 15 February 2002 they were officially
charged by the prosecution.

Monaghan,
McCauley and Connolly (or Los Tres Monos, as they were
styled in Colombia) had been seen by witnesses in the FARC-controlled
area since 1998 (83-95). Marcos Trujillo Celada saw one of
them in August 1998 at Donde Robert with many other persons,
among them a FARC commanding officer known as Julián. Giovanni
Escobar Polania declared that they had shown FARC combatants a
video about explosives in Ireland. John Alexander Rodríguez
had seen them carrying out explosives training in late 1998,
mid-1999, late 2000 and 2001. Rodríguez added that during
their second visit they carried missile launchers with them.
Furthermore, the men's passports recorded visits to Venezuela,
Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama from July 1999 to April 2001,
while their real passports - those issued on their real names
- were used to leave Ireland, stopping at Paris and Madrid.

According to
Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC, now PSNI) officers Garry Ian
Clark and Christopher Kenneth Johnson, James Monaghan had been
arrested in Ireland for use of explosives and for IRA
membership. He had escaped from a Dublin courtroom using an
explosive. He was re-arrested, sentenced to ten years, and
freed in 1985. Martin McCauley had been arrested in 1994 and
sentenced to two years for possession of arms and rocket
attacks. He was wounded during the arrest. He was allegedly
involved in a murder, though his participation has never been
proven. Niall Connolly was Sinn Féin's representative in Cuba.
In 2001 he had tried to obtain a false passport in Northern Ireland
(55). Captain Pulido and other Colombian officers further
stated that as a result of IRA training provided to FARC
guerrillas, there had been an increase in terrorist
activities, including mortar launching from 1999 to 2004, a
technique pioneered in Europe by IRA explosives experts (118).

James William
Monaghan [Edward Joseph Campbell] declared that he had been
born in Ireland on 9 August 1945 and had worked with the
railway as a metallurgic technician. In 1999 he was granted a
position with an organisation called Coiste na n-Iarchimí
(Ex-Prisoners' Committee), whose primary aim was to help
former Republican prisoners to reintegrate into society and to
enable them to use their abilities to shape the new society
that would emerge from the Irish Peace Process. In 1972 he was
arrested in London and given a prison sentence for the use of
military equipment. He confirmed that he was also sentenced
for placing explosives in a courtroom (73-75). Martin John
McCauley [John Joseph Kelly] said he had been born on 1
December 1962 in County Armagh. He admitted that he had been
convicted of the use of arms in Ireland and wounded in a
fight. He arrived in Bogotá from Paris, in the company of Monaghan, on an Air France flight
(75-76). Niall Connolly [David Bracken], born on 5 December
1964, stated that he had worked as a translator and lived in
Havana with his partner, a Cuban national, and two children
(76-77). He arrived in Bogotá via Madrid and
Caracas.

The British
explosives expert Keith Borer was called in as a witness for
the defence. Although he acknowledged that he was not familiar
with FARC techniques, Borer declared that the methods in use
by the IRA and FARC were not similar. He analysed the results
of the first explosive traces tests and though he recognised
that the Itemiser was a very accurate instrument, he added
that further tests were negative because the first samples may
have been contaminated (107-117).

Other
witnesses testified for the defence, including Ross
O'Sullivan, Seán Ciarán Ó Domhnaill, Laurence Patrick McKeown,
Síle Maguire and Michael McLaren. The testimony of the latter
witness ultimately worked in favour of the prosecution as he
presented electronically-manipulated videos in an attempt to
prove that Monaghan had not been in Colombia at the time that
he was charged with training guerrillas in San Vicente del
Caguán (126). Further documents included tax payment
certificates but there were no records for the periods during
which Monaghan had been seen in Colombia. Ultimately, the
defence failed to present evidence in the form of notes,
interviews or recordings to establish that the three men had
been conducting social research on, or studying, the peace
process (79).

On 26 April
2004, Bogotá's First Penal Court Judge Jairo Acosta acquitted
the three Irishmen of the most serious charge of training for
illegal activities which carried a 15-20 year sentence, but
sentenced Monaghan to three and half years, McCauley to three
years and Connolly to two years for travelling on false
passports. They were released on probation while the
prosecution appealed the sentence. The appeal was successful
at the Appeals Court on 16 December 2004. This court also
reversed the acquittal on the charge of training guerrillas,
sentencing Niall Connolly and James W. Monaghan to seventeen
and a half years each, and ordering them to pay a fine of
approximately US$280,000. The Court sentenced John McCauley to
seventeen years with a fine of approximately US$217,000. The
three men were to be deported from Colombia after they had
completed their prison sentences.

However, at
the time of the sentencing they were no longer in Colombia as
they had jumped bail. In spite of the international arrest
warrant issued for Monaghan, McCauley and Connolly, they
managed to flee the country and on 15 September 2005 were
safely back in Ireland, just eight days after the IRA's
historic announcement of its cessation of illegal activity.
Shortly after arrival, the three reported to An Garda Síochána,
the Irish police force, of their presence in the country. To
date, extradition requests from the Colombian government have
been unsuccessful and the three men remain at large in
Ireland. [5]

It is not
the purpose of this article to unearth the actual facts in the
history of FARC-IRA relations. Rather I propose to analyse the
different discourses which can be read between the lines of
relevant documents, interviews and media articles.